


confinement (the prison of my mind)

by timeraider



Category: iKON (Kpop)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Trigger Warning for Self-Harm, exploration fic, hanbin centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 23:49:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6929383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeraider/pseuds/timeraider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>god makes man, and this is the devil's finishing touches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	confinement (the prison of my mind)

**Author's Note:**

> If sadness is like a headache that can be driven away with a couple of aspirins, depression is like cancer.

Fame is rotten, it eats at your bones until you're left with nothing but an empty shell, and maybe the world is, too, the way it is quick to judge and hard to convince - and this transient life, one that feels as if I am walking on clouds, is one I would have abandoned had I known the consequences. There is no antidote, no cure for this emptiness, and I stare at my face, on magazines, on the television, but I don't recognize myself. Strangely, it doesn't hurt.

 

"They say time flies, but you keep breaking its wings."

 

The days blur into a dark swirling mess. I'm stuck, like a boat stranded too far out coast, wave after wave crashing down, ones that I'm unable to steer out of. A timeless eternity stretched out before me, an expanse of borderless millenniums, an inky blackness. I feel lethargic, limbs heavy, wading through water that bubbles over my head, suffocating and choking. 

 

I pray that my eyes are the first to go, when I am finally able to be consumed by the shadows, unseeing, uncaring. I will gladly give up the vicious gift of sight if it means I will no longer be able to glance at the cameras that glare at me like pair after pair of judgmental eyes, snapping and flashing from every angle. It is ironic, really, the way I abhor them, for I am one who is supposed to be born for the camera. It is on days that I can't muster the strength to get out of bed that I fully embrace my role as a star - I yank myself up and put on a mask, one that is perpetually smiling, glowing under the stage lights. 

 

"My knees are burning hot, but God is cold."

 

I hate talking on television. The world is an aphrodisiac, so you stay turned on every second, connected to every single device you can possibly own, every minute that you breathe and live. My bones heave with exhaustion after talking for extended periods of time, discussing irrelevant bits of information made up about my personality, shaped to be someone I am not. There are times when I want to curl up on set and plug in earbuds with soft music, forgetting about the world and reminding myself that I am just a child who chose to mature, vulnerable, exposed. Oh, the myriad of things I do for the sole purpose of surviving in the entertainment industry - I used to be obstinate, edgy, with a strong personality - but now, I have fit into the mold, a cookie-cutter perfect individual. I would laugh if the truth weren't so poignant.

 

I am a cyborg, or at least that is what everyone thinks I am. They don't care any longer if I don't write my emotions clearly across my face, they never did. They just treat me like a caged exhibition at a zoo, poking, prodding, pushing all my buttons to get a desired response. I hate it, hate the spotlight I was unexpectedly thrust into. My childhood dream of becoming a singer - it was so different from this, and I realised how naive I indeed had been back then. It feels like a bucket of cold water to the face, a brutal awakening, as the intensive dance routines I had to commit to memory and the strong, heavy beat of a pop track resounding in my eardrums are. All I had wanted was to sing, to pour out my heart and emotions in simple songs with a plain background, slow, heart-wrenching, to express what I felt through unheard melodies, to perform with a soulful sound that would reach out to my audience. Instead, I am ushered through dressing rooms, searching for costumes, sweaty and disorientated, thick makeup slathered all over my face, couple with strict diets and practice sessions that extend into the first rays daylight. I am drained of energy, and I realise that growing up comes with a price. 

 

"And your lips, every empty promise made and said."

 

I look into the mirror when it's my turn to use the bathroom, and laugh at the overdone eyeliner, the fourteen layers of lipgloss that had been slapped on earlier. I look like a clown, a sad and pathetic one. 

 

I wonder how it would feel like to ruin my doll-like face, to lose my throat, my voice, my lips, to be eternally silent, but I pause, because am I not already like this? Oppressed, suppressed, a shout in the dark that goes unheard, a desperate cry for help that is ignored. I feel a foreign urge to cry, one I had forced myself to swallow years into my debut. The criticism stings, and benevolent words like "those who mind don't matter, those who matter don't mind" have lost their effect a long time ago. The very same syllables strung together to comfort are destructive, and public sentiment is something I have not learnt how to cope with. The harsh words keep me up on cold, late nights, overthinking, sinking into a vicious cycle of self-loathing. Paradoxically, they fuel my inspiration, and it is on such nights that I create my most sensitive and emotional songs.

 

"We use words to bring forth sticks and stones, to sing songs of hate that fill the streets with bones."

 

I'm exhausted half the time, struggling to keep my eyes open or to pay attention during interviews, but this life feels like a transient dream, and I am walking on clouds. I can't decide if that is supposed to be good or bad. It feels mighty fine at times, when I am able to compose songs and actually record them into nice clips that I plays to himself, mouthing the lyrics I so painstakingly scribbled down in dozens of notebooks, on page after page, when I reach my lows. But there's always a catch about walking on clouds, when everything gets too nice and I take slow steps to enjoy it. They sag under my weight and explode into buckets of torrential rain, cold and drenching, that don't stop for a long, long time, even when I will it to go away.

 

"Do we learn to read to receive the lies, to deceive the eyes from seeing between the lines?"

 

What can I do, honestly? What can I do but to perform songs that I have completely no attachment to, songs that are far too shallow to express what I truly think of the world and society, songs composed to fit the tastes of the crowds, songs about meaningless, saccharine love that I would have cringed at. What can I do but to pose for the cameras like a porcelain doll, because I am just another pretty face in the myriad of idols that exist in the industry, serving the purpose of nothing but aesthetics and entertainment? What can I do but to grit my teeth and bear with whatever I hate?

 

I can't do nothing to avoid the cold camera lens, the constantly judging eyes of the crowd, looking at me like I'm weird for not responding in a conventional way to questions in interviews, labeling me as shy and antisocial when really, I just prefer to keep to myself, because I'm broken inside, and being open means that I would have to lay my shattered pieces in plain view, something I'm not exactly sure is lovable.

 

"You're the victor in this pageantry, but the only trophy you deserve - catastrophe."

 

So I give up, and when I fall from the clouds, I don't bother to climb back up.

 

Even the most beautiful of springs will pass, and the most glorious of butterflies will come to the end of their life cycles; falling to the ground, unable to spread their colorful wings any longer.

 

When we can't dream any longer, we die.

 

I am dead, on the inside.

 

I don't bother reviving myself.

  

"I laugh when I’m happy, cry when I’m sad; it hurts when I’m poked, I get angry when it continues; I despair and I hope, just like you"

 

It isn't pretty, unlike the scenes in angsty romantic movies, in which someone saves the lead right before he makes the fatal slice on the tender skin of his wrist, and I am not an idiot in love. I spend an hour in the bathroom holding a spare razor blade, putting it up against the light, watching the sharp edges reflect the fluorescent glow prettily, and it takes another day to muster up the courage. Nobody notices my red, sore eyes, swollen with withheld tears. Of course.

 

Nobody does. 

 

It's a cold Autumn evening when I lock the bathroom door, and bring the tip of a silvery razor to my pale wrist, slicing at the flesh without resistance, a long, straight cut that instantaneously makes me feel better.

 

I press harder, into the vein, and a blotch of red spurts out onto the tile. It had always been my favourite colour, a symbol of passion and vitality. For the first time since I was a child, as my vision blurs into indefinite pixels, I feel more alive than ever. 

 

"God makes man, and this is the devil's finishing touches."

 

A peculiar numbness crawls up my spine like a cold snake that constricts my heart in a tight squeeze when I wake up in a familiar white-walled room, the fluorescent lights blinding. 

 

Here I lie, a puppet of fate, denied even my last present, the gift of death. 

 

I once had hope, hope that I would find my way out of this dark mist, but I have come to acknowledge condemnation, the feeling of liberation then being thrown into the gutters immediately after. It isn't foreign, and it has dulled out into a blankness that clouds my senses.  

 

The cameras shift into my new room here, too. They flash away by my bedside, and I shut my eyes. The voices blur out into a muffled, dull drone of recovery wishes, requests for exclusive interviews, and pitiful exclamations. I just want to be left alone, because I am a demon, a time bomb on the brink of explosion - and devils are just angels who aren't loved.

 

It's winter, white everywhere, dripping thickly from the walls, the ceiling, the bed. When will it be spring again?

 

Kurt Cobain once said, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." 

 

I scoff. Who assumed one could not do both? An empty shell, a mimicry of Sisyphus, trapped in an eternal dungeon I cannot escape.

 

"You wish me well, I wish you hell."

 

Fade out.


End file.
